“IN THESE LAST FATEFUL YEARS – IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS”
July 24 2016
We – my wife and I – live in the country on 50 acres – 20 hectares – of mostly wetlands and trees. On the only open land I planted trees, some 4,000, except for the site where we have our buildings: our 2 storey house, with attached sunroom – shaded by two soft maples – where we spend most of our waking time (not in the winter, of course), a 2 storey guest house and a detached workshop-toolshed. And, naturally, our vegetable garden and the yard with 3 apple trees, one early – I already made applesauce from the grounded apples last week – another early fall and one late fall – a Northern Spy. Oh yes, I also have half an acre of grass to mow.
Just as our home is surrounded by trees, I am always surrounded by books: this week I re-read parts of Schumacher’s SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, written more than 40 years ago, but still very current. He ends the book with pointing to THE KINGDOM. Here’s what he writes: “unless you seek first the Kingdom of God, (the welfare of creation, I might add) the other things which you also need, will cease to be available to you.”
We are now approaching that point in history.
There’s something scary in the air. Trump had that right, but he did not mention the Biggest Scare: Climate Change. His ‘Christian’ vice-president choice does not believe in Climate Change and also, not surprisingly, is a great advocate of unlimited gun access.
It seems that there is a universal eye-opening going on, as if we are awakening from a horrible hangover. It is not evident in our immediate surroundings. There it is quite peaceful. A few weeks ago a black bear came banging at our sun room-door, bouncing away into the bush as soon as it saw us. A pair of deer is regularly grazing in the field in front of our house. Squirrels are back after an absence of a few years, forcing me to squirrel-proof the bird feeders. I notice a greater variety of birds, although one humming bird is missing, but there is a mother turkey, surrounded by 7 little chicks parading in the yard. This morning I saw a fisher on our walkway.
Daily we thank the Lord for the beauty of the countryside where we live. The pallet factory in our village sells its leftovers, mostly good-size square blocks of clean hard wood, so we bought there enough fuel to last us 2-3 years. There’s a long waiting list for that stuff. The maple syrup harvest was good, and, thanks to a wonderful growing season and timely rains – and extra watering – the garden has never looked better, giving us this coming week the first green beans, the first new potatoes, with just one meal of last year’s crop left. Also my new hearing aids make it possible to hear the birds sing or screech – the blue jays and the woodpeckers.
I almost daily bike to the village store- 5.6 km away – on a new bike, as the old one needed new tires, extensive repair, costing more than it was worth. I love bikes and biking. Living on a busy highway, I always wear an orange shirt and peddle on the edge of the road with a mirror attached to my helmet, enabling me to spot what’s coming up behind me. Still it’s always prayer time when I am in the saddle.
Even though around our place it is a peaceable kingdom, the world at large is not at ease. More and more books and articles deal with the planet’s disintegration. Daily I study the global heat map where I often notice that the Far North in Canada and Siberia is one of the warmest places in the world, the area were the METHANE is buried in the permafrost, 20 times more dangerous for Climate Change, and ready to explode. The sins of our generation are visiting us with increasing ferocity.
Then there is the political scene. Turkey is clamping down on dissent, the USA is becoming a police state, Trump is as crazy as ever, France is frantic, Germany in jitters, Great Britain has its Brexit problems, Italy – and actually the entire world – has a serious debt problem, and in Africa famine approaches, and with it massive population movements, all trekking north toward Europe. In the USA the heat and the lack of moisture will cause food inflation, while the deluge of moneys released by central banks in the West has depressed interest rates below the zero mark. All this means that those who live from investments must pay ever more for daily food, while getting nothing back from their hard-earned money: the worst of all possible worlds.
Another personal note.
While I read non-fiction during the day (this week centering on the possible apocalypse) I read fiction in the evening. Having just finished one novel I just grabbed another book and discovered on the first few pages that THE CLOWNS OF GOD by Morris West is about a Pope who is forced to resign because he had a vision of the PAROUSIA, the return of the Lord. The Holy Father had just finished a draft of an encyclical written in the customary Latin with as title: IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS – IN THESE LAST FATEFUL YEARS – trying to prepare the Roman Catholic Church for the return of the Lord, when his writing was leaked to the Curia, the Vatican cabinet, which wanted no part of it, and forced the Pope to resign.
I greatly believe in Providence, and picking that particular book at random signals to me that, yes, I should pursue this topic.
So what are the HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE?
Looking back, there have been total collapses before. The fall of Rome in the fifth Century is a good case, heralding the Dark Ages. Jared Diamond in his COLLAPSE has related several instances, of which the Easter Island is just one example. The peoples settling the isolated Easter Island around 900 AD engineered their own collapse after several hundred years of expanding their population and quarrying gigantic stone statues (weighing up to 270 tons) which they then moved to the perimeter of the island. They deforested the island and the surrounding waters filled with silt, while at the same time vast energies were expended on rivalries over which clan could build the biggest stone head. The first-recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April (Easter Sunday), 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen visited it for a week and estimated a population of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants.
When Captain Cook arrived at the island in 1774, he found a tiny population (down perhaps from a peak of 20,000) that he described as “small, lean, timid, and miserable.” The civilization had collapsed in a cannibalistic endgame.
Collapse there was caused by population growth beyond the capacity of the land to support it, by destruction of good farmland, and the use of resources in tribal conflict and monument building. Leadership in both societies failed to respond to the handwriting on the wall. This sounds all too familiar.
As we fail to adequately address climate change and its root cause, will our society face a similar collapse? All signs point to this.
STRATFOR
Here’s what I found in STRATFOR. The name is an abbreviation of Strategic Information, one of the best- and also most expensive – news sources. When an outfit such as STRATFOR considers COLLAPSE we better take it seriously. Here’s part of it:
‘The obvious way to answer this question (of COLLAPSE) is by looking at how the various Dark Ages began and asking whether similar conditions apply today. Strikingly, in every case where we have enough evidence, we see the same five causal factors, which I like to call the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The first, which is always prominent, is mass migration, on a scale that the societies of the time cannot control. Just how many immigrants it took to destabilize borderlands and spread violence across entire empires must have varied, although DNA seems to suggest that in the wrong circumstances even a group less than one-tenth the size of the host population could bring the roof crashing in.
The second factor, often coming on the back of the first, is disease. Long-distance mass movements sometimes merged what had previously been separate disease pools, producing new infections to which hardly anyone was immune. Steppe nomads migrating across thousands of kilometers were probably the main vector for the Black Death, which killed perhaps a quarter of the world’s population between 1350 and 1400.
The third force, regularly linked to the first two, is state failure. Collapsing borders and shrinking populations often bring down governments too, and as chaos spreads, even states that have not been directly hit by invasion and plague can be sucked into the whirlpool.
Fourth, and strongly linked to the first three forces, is the collapse of trade. When failing states can no longer protect merchants, long-distance exchange networks break down, bringing starvation and yet more rounds of migration, disease and violence. Many historians think that the tipping point in the fall of the Roman Empire came when the Vandals invaded North Africa and cut off grain shipments to Italy from what is now Tunisia in 439. The city of Rome lost three-quarters of its population across the next two decades, and in 476 the Western Empire was officially declared defunct.
The fifth factor, always present but never in a straightforward way, is climate change. Some great collapses, such as that in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1200 B.C., coincide with rising temperatures; others, such as the Roman and Han Chinese breakdowns in the early first millennium, coincide with global cooling. The direction of climate change seems to matter less than the fact that any big change puts stress on farming, which — when everything else is already going wrong — might be enough to push people over the edge.”
So far STRATFOR.
When an important body, such as STRATFOR starts analyzing COLLAPSE then it is time to take it seriously. Take Trump. If he wins, collapse is certain. If he loses, collapse is also certain. That’s how tippy matters are.
So, are we in the last days?
IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS – in these last fateful years- is that really true? Are we there now?
When the FLOOD came, the people then did have extensive warnings. After all, it took Noah and his clan – and they probably engaged outside help as well – many decades to gather the wood, to cut the planks to size, all with rather primitive tools, and so construct this monstrous ARK. Then the animals came, the same animals that now are disappearing at an alarming rate. Ample warning!
Jesus also gave pointers. He said, of course pointing to nature, when the trees are budding, we know that spring is near. In other words: Keep an eye on what’s going on.
When many millions are on the move, when the weather becomes weirder by the day, when the money-market goes haywire, when the TRUMP tragedy emerges out of nowhere, watch out: the last days are at hand.
Of course we will not heed the warnings. People in Noah’s days did not, and human nature is still the same.
No, we don’t know when The New Beginning is at hand. The church does not want to touch this subject, even though it is its very mission to prepare the people for The New Creation.
Does Acts 2 give us a model? Then, right after Pentecost when, in Jerusalem, thousands for the first time heard about Jesus and the Holy Spirit descended upon them, they expected Jesus to come back within their lifetime. So they pooled their resources and founded a tight community where they had everything is common.
Of course Jesus did not return then, and now, 2000 years later, he still has not come back. Yet, all the signs that our ‘civilization’ has run its course are everywhere.
Oh, yes, THE GREAT TRIBULATION!
According to Matthew 24: 21-22:”there will be great distress, unequaled, had those days not been cut short, no one would survive”.
Of course. We have built a society totally dependent on finite fossil fuel. Once it runs out, and it will, that’s the end. Electricity is fabulous; it makes this blog possible. Once is stops, so does everything: planes, trains, cars, trucks, computers. Within 2 weeks most people on the grid will be dead.
We live in the most vulnerable era in history. We have bet society on the most fragile of systems. Nobody knows when our infrastructure will collapse, but when it does….
Read the entire chapter 24 of the gospel of Matthew. It makes for the most interesting reading.
Fortunately: THE VEIL THAT HIDES THE FACE OF THE FUTURE WAS WOVEN BY THE HAND OF MERCY.